Nassim Nicholas Taleb On Human Memory - Read a passage in Taleb's Fooled by Randomness that connects very will with the main thrust of Edward de Bono.
Memory in humans is a large machine to make inductive inferences.
Think of memories: What is easier to remember, a collection of random facts glued together, or a story, something that offers a series of logical links?
Causality is easier to commit to memory. Our brain would have less work to do in order to retain the information. The size is smaller.
What is induction exactly?
Induction is going from plenty of particulars to the general.
It is very handy, as the general takes much less room in one's memory than a collection of particulars. The effect of such compression is the reduction in the degree of randomness.
Wow!! This explains one big reason why humans are fooled by randomness. We narrate, we see patterns that are not there, which helps us remember, though the method, almost by definition, distorts the truth; it overlays a pattern, a story, a theory over what may or may not actually be there.
Think of techniques for training memory. They involve creating links, connections, patterns between what needs to be learned and what you already know. (need example). The byproduct of this approach is distortion, the reduction of randomness that wasn't there.
The connection to Edward de Bono is that de Bono stressed that we are pattern seekers/creators. Our minds see patterns whether they exist objectively or not. It's part of his theory of the mind as self-organizing.
Scientific Theories, according to Popper, must be one of two kinds. Either falsefied (proven wrong) or open to falsification (a clear path to how it may be proven wrong). Anything that cannot be proven wrong (There is a God) cannot be scientific theory. It is belief but not science.
 | Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets by Nassim Nicholas Taleb |
 | The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb |